Tentacle-Free Anime: Live-Action! "Rurouni Kenshin" (2012)

Hello again readers, welcome back for another award-winning round of Tentacle-Free Anime! Hope you didn’t think I left you suddenly. No way, we just went on a tiny hiatus to sync up with a new schedule for your tentacle-free programming. But from this point on we’re on track like usual. Today we’re showing off a new feature that is bound to pop-up from time-to-time, reviews of live-action adaptations of anime!

Kenshin Himura was an assassin for the Imperial side during the war that ended the Shogunate and installed the Meiji government. After killing countless people, he made a vow to never kill again. Ten years later, he finds a home at a failing dojo, only to be caught up in a string of murders related to an opium ring. His commitment to never taking a life is put to the test as the people he’s come to care about are threatened by figures from his past. [AnimeNewsNetwork.com]

Oh, Rurouni Kenshin, I remember watching you when I was but a wee lad growing up. You came one late night TV as a new anime to the States and now you’ve returned once again as a gorgeous live-action movie. Yes, you heard me right, I said you’re gorgeous. Everything about you just feels so right, thank you for coming into my life.

Rurouni Kenshin poster.

I mean it guys, Rurouni Kenshin the live-action movie is beautiful to watch. Everything is so crisp and it feels like the era of its time. Everything is wonderfully choreographed and simply the cinematography is used in such a way that you’re propelled into the world never to be let go. It’s brought to you Studio Swan and Warner Bros., directed by Keishi Ōtomo, this movie leaves nothing to be desired. It’s all here: a wonderful adaptation to an original story, a flawless blend of the best story arcs from the original story, fantastic pacing, smart writing (with some of it taken straight from the original source material) and you get to see every major character from the original without any of it feeling forced.Hollywood gets a lot of flak for its live-action adaptations of stories from Japan, heck they even get it from adaptations of stories straight from here in America, but while this movie wasn’t truly brought to you by Hollywood, the stain they’ve left has been thusly felt for anything resembling a live-action version of any franchise.

Such examples would be: Transformers, Speed Racer, and Dragonball Evolution to name a few. But after having seen quite a few live-action adaptations of Japanese stories brought to us by Japan, it feels like they for sure have a much better grasp on the whole concept.

Takeru Satoh plays the lead Kenshin faithfully, keeping the sense of joy you get when Kenshin is happy, and the deep rooted anger you get when he’s holding back his dark emotions. It’s also very wonderful to see him say “Oro,” Kenshin’s catchphrase of sorts, which is basically an expression of confusion. It was very nice to see them keep in that bit about him. We also got to see the other main players of the series, Kamiya Kaoru (the love interest), Sagara Sanosuke (the rival), Yahiko Myojin (the rascal) and Saito Hajime (the law enforcement figure), all played strongly by their actors and actress.

Takeru Satoh as Kenshin.

If there are any complaints of this series, there would be only two: And both having to do with the main villains. The first villain of the movie, Kanryu Takeda, is a business man who plans on using Opium to take over Japan by smuggling into the country and in essence get as many people addicted as he can so they will pay high dollar for the stuff. As far as I am aware, he’s an original character, and though his actor Teruyuki Kagawa gives a strong performance, the actual character is pretty one-dimensional with no true reason behind his goals. At least none that we are given to make him sympathetic in any way, it’s really unfortunate because the original story of Rurouni Kenshin is well known for its strong, well-rounded villains. Speaking of which, we do get a villain from the original story here in the form of our second guy: Udō Jin-e, who works for Takeda, going on a killing spree and using the nickname that Kenshin went by in the war. Jin-e has the power to hypnotize people just by looking at people but the ability, for newcomers to the story, is never properly explained so it ends up coming off as a cheap trick at points to move the plot along.

Udō Jin-e

These do not break the experience though; they just slightly detract from it and they were things I personally had problems with.

The movie does feel like it is within the time period of Meiji era, or at least what I feel would be the Meiji era if I lived there. It’s filled with Samurai who can’t afford to make a living anymore after the war and are not treated well, a corrupt government and those who were given their riches instead of earning them, and use those riches to look down on those without money. The movie also has guns in it, as this was shortly after the time that gunpowder was being used in Japan and the Samurai code was becoming obsolete.

Kenshin and Sanosuke battle other Samurai.

“Live by the sword, die by the sword.”

Overall the movie is a breath of fresh air among many adaptation films we see so often these days that stays incredibly true to the Source Material while still building its own original story around that. It’s also a plus that you can go into this film without any prior knowledge of the original anime or manga it is based off of and you will still come out with a knowledgeable experience. The only real downside to those who are new to the story will notice is that the movie has no English dub, it’s only subbed which to many can be a real pain to deal with. Perhaps sometime in the future there will be one, but I do recommend checking it out regardless, if anything to enter an older part of the world and experience what it was like to live without the technology that guides us today.

Final Score: 4.5 “Oro’s” out of 5.

Have you seen "Rurouni Kenshin"? Enjoyed the review? Let us know in the comments section!